


Undesired Symmetry

by notquiteaphoenix



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Introspection, Lovers To Enemies, Post-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-08 02:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16420214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquiteaphoenix/pseuds/notquiteaphoenix
Summary: For all that Ana has tried to support Jack in finding his love on the opposite end of the battlefield, she never expected to find herself in the same situation.





	Undesired Symmetry

Jack hands her a datachip when she returns from scouting.

 

With just a “You should look at this,” He turns and disappears into the hall towards his end of the Necropolis.

 

Ana doesn’t hurry to her own sham of a room. Jack does not share good news these days—or perhaps, he cannot bring himself to see the world is not ending.

 

Not yet, at least.

 

She pulls up the holoscreens, setting the chip in the reader.

 

Immediately, Ana knows she is looking at a skirmish between Winston’s Overwatch and Gabriel’s mismatched band of Talon agents. The image is from a flycam, surely, one designed to _not_ imprint location nor date. Perhaps one of the ones designed for Blackwatch. Ana is not sure how Jack is getting these, but she suspects for all his scorn for the New Overwatch, Jack keeps a backdoor to Athena, the only being other than Jack that has access to the entirety of Overwatch and Blackwatch.

 

A purple glow hits Lena and for a moment, Ana thinks it’s from that hacker using the name Sombra. It can’t be Widowmaker—and oh how Ana can never shake the pain of seeing her friend’s love and murderer, even these many years from the day she first uncovered the identity of her own ‘killer’—as the Talon puppet may be ridiculously showy but she’s a sniper through and through and knows where on the battlefield she belongs.

 

The color is not the right hue for either of them anyway.

 

The camera adjusts, moving closer as if Athena is just as curious as Ana.

 

Ana feels her breath catch in her throat.

 

Lena’s attacker is definitely not Sombra.

 

She doesn't want to believe, wants her eyes to be deceiving her but the camera follows the new combatant, getting close enough to see familiar red and blue eyes.

 

Ana shivers, and not just from the coolness of a desert night.

 

She knows why Jack shows this to her, giving her warning like she gave him of Reaper.

 

Ana wonders if he hates her a little for it. She certainly hates him a little for showing _Moira O’deorain_ herself looking as at home on the battlefield as she does in a laboratory.

 

Ana watches the video, drinking in this version of Moira. The strange eyepatch and markings above her eyebrows make Ana curious; Moira devotes much to aesthetic but keeps a sense of the pragmatic, enough to force function into form. Overall, she’s grown more dramatic, her outfit and weapons more pronounced and eerie than her Blackwatch days.

 

Ana remembers Moira modeling for her, gratefulness at Moira’s continued presence warring with fears of her scientist—resilient and ever fierce but Moira was never a soldier—working in the field.

 

She tried not to allow fears to rule her; she trusted Gabriel to look after his people.

 

Sometimes, she wonders if Jack ever told Gabriel about Moira and her, about what she asked of Jack.

 

She kept her private and work life separate those days—there was Fareeha and there was Overwatch—but Moira, beautiful Moira, blurred those lines. And when Moira’s curiosity crossed to many lines, she went to Jack for a personal favor to protect her lover from the legal fallout.

 

Maybe Jack would have stood firm against Gabriel’s request for the scientist—she had seen the horror on Jack’s face as he read reports on Moira’s experiments before he masked it, pushed his emotions down and forced himself to be the Strike Commander.

 

Maybe he would have said no, maybe Talon’s plot to infiltrate Blackwatch would have been thwarted or delayed.

 

But she had asked and was grateful when her old friend crumbled before her.

 

Because Jack may be able to say no to Gabriel, but he could not say no to both Gabriel and herself.

 

Jack has always been so soft, hidden by layers of experience and war. He’s not good with the words of relationships but gives so fully to those he loves.

 

And Ana—damn herself—had wanted Moira. Wanted Moira to say, stay under the shelter of funded labs and the protective red tape that Jack—that Overwatch—could provide.

 

Stay where duty binds Ana, stay where Ana could share her life. Where Ana could watch Moira and Fareeha huddled over homework, bickering over the answers to a biology class crossword (“We have to use the words in the box,” Fareeha argued and Moria scoffed, “But they are _wrong_!”), could continue to surprise Moira in her lab with tea, could feel that oh so familiar smirk against her lips, those nails tracing patterns on her thigh—

 

Ana forces the memories back. She cannot get caught in a cycle like Jack, caught between scant hope and a sea of regret mixed with far too much alcohol.

 

And as she watches the tapes, watches Moira fighting this new Overwatch, ever beautiful and haunting, even if the battlefield is no place for her peculiar scientist—

 

She has to admit, she still wants Moira.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally threaded on [twitter](https://twitter.com/wwmusing).
> 
>  
> 
> ~~I think a lot on how the original Strike Team would each blame themselves for everything; after all, they saved the world together, they are used to thinking everything depends on them.~~


End file.
